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Technology Stocks : John, Mike & Tom's Wild World of Stocks -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jorj X Mckie who wrote (1949)	10/26/2000 11:55:18 AM
From: John Pitera	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2850

yes, I agree M&A will heat up. CLECs are not really an area I've been focusing on. even JNPR and BRCD and the SAN's are now falling hard, so this round of selling that started on Sept 1 should be winding down. I think the Fed has always been waiting for the NASD to get below 3000 and then they will start discussion of the next rate move being lower. BRCM is down at it's 200 dma today...... BRCD looks like it's got more downside. now if We can just get JNPR to 140-138......... notice the spectacular blow up in CLRS after they blew the Q and the conference call.... the penguins out with the downgrades on that today. they lost 4 deals to CMRC and ARBA late in the Quarter. My tech guy was right when he kept telling me what a lousy company CLRS is in the B2B area. --------- Clarus' Stock Gets Hammered After Poor Report By Joe Bousquin Senior Writer 10/26/00 10:49 AM ET Updated from 10/25/00 Clarus (CLRS:Nasdaq - news) shares plunged 43% in early trading Thursday after the company reported disappointing quarterly results Wednesday. Shares of the business-to-business software company traded as low as $11.25, after closing at $19.89 during regular trading on Wednesday. Lately, the stock was rebounding somewhat at $12.31. But like a bad joke, it wasn't just what Clarus said Wednesday, it was how the company delivered it. Clarus said technical difficulties prevented it from getting the press release containing its quarterly results out to news wires in time for its conference call with analysts Wednesday. When the numbers finally did come out at 6:34 p.m. EDT, they were ugly. The company reported a loss of 54 cents per share, about three barn widths away from the First Call/Thomson Financial consensus estimate of a loss of 35 cents a share. Clarus said revenue came in at $13.5 million for the quarter, up substantially from the year-earlier's $1.98 million but just 34% higher than the second quarter's $10.1 million. Competitors Ariba (ARBA:Nasdaq - news) and Commerce One (CMRC:Nasdaq - news) both turned in sequential growth of greater than 60% for the third quarter. And Clarus' $13.5 million in revenue was at the low end of what analysts were expecting. It gets worse. On the conference call that analysts stumbled through without the press release to guide them, CEO Steve Jeffery said the company lost four deals to Ariba and Commerce One that it was trying to close at the quarter's end. He also said the company had to take a $2.3 million write-off for one customer that couldn't pay its bill. It was that write-off, a company representative said, that caused the company to miss its numbers. But even without that write off, analysts said the company would have reported a loss of 41 cents per share, still 6 cents worse than the consensus estimate. Both Chase H&Q and Stephens downgraded the stock Thursday. Chase H&Q downgraded it to market perform from buy, while Stephens downgraded it to neutral from buy. (Both firms have done underwriting for Clarus.) In a research note, Stephens analyst Scott Alaniz didn't hide his ire for being blindsided by the charge. "Clarus recognized the revenue from this customer in 1999, and even though this account was months past due, it was not addressed in [recent quarterly] filings. It was also not mentioned in our discussion with management regarding accounts receivable credit quality. Needless to say, we were surprised," Alaniz wrote. Clarus was already in hot water with analysts and investors, who had wondered during the quarter whether the company would miss the estimates. They're not wondering anymore.